NaVi.seized becomes inactive - 1uke as stand-in

Natus Vincere announced that Denis "seized" Kostin will go inactive. Aleksey "1uke" Zimin will replace him as a stand-in in the upcoming events.

With a VK post, NaVi’s coach Mikhaylo "Kane" Blagin alerted the fans that seized will step down from the active roster. A rough translation below:

Hello. Tomorrow begins our battle to save a slot at ESL. The situation which we are in is very difficult: we will have a match against GODSENT and we need to take two wins.

I want to warn you right away that Denis is no longer a part of the active roster, and we will play with a substitute. I think many have seen our Teamspeak and this is not a fake.

We will play the next games with Luke as a substitute for the 5th. The guy is very cheerful and brought positive mood to our team. I hope we can achieve the desired result.

Team Spirit Academy’s player 1uke will replace seized in the games against North and GODSENT at ESL Pro League on October 19-20.

In July, seized had stepped down from Natus Vincere together with Ladislav "GuardiaN" Kovács, but he was reintegrated into the team only a few weeks later, once Danylo "Zeus" Teslenko joined with the role of captain.

Since then, the team hasn't achieved any noteworthy result:

NaVi, invited to ESL One New York as the defending champions, lost in the group stage 1-2.

They also displayed a poor performance at ELEAGUE CS:GO Premier 2017, losing the decider’s match in the group stage against G2 Esports 2 to 0.

The CIS qualifier for EPICENTER 2017 were progressing smoothly, but they failed in the Grand Final versus Vega Squadron.

Natus Vincere’s best result took place at DreamHack Masters Malmö 2017 with a 5-8th place.

Seized declared on Twitter that he will comment on the reasoning behind this decision in a few days.

Natus Vincere’s roster

Danylo "Zeus" Teslenko

Ioann "Edward" Sukhariev

Aleksandr "s1mple" Kostyliev

Egor "flamie" Vasilyev

Aleksey "1uke" Zimin (stand-in)

Mikhaylo "Kane" Blagin (coach)

Denis "seized" Kostin (inactive)

Header image by Helena Kristiansson - ESL

Vincenzo "Skulz" Milella

Vincenzo is an esports writer with five years of experience. Former head editor for Natus Vincere, he has produced content for DreamHack, FACEIT, DOTAFire, 2P, and more. Follow him on Twitter and Facebook.